Metropolitan Home (published in altered form)
Todd Wickstrom has seen the future, and it looks very specific. Continue reading
The hungry mind
Los Angeles Times
Maybe it was one Rachael Ray cookbook too many, but when a memoir called “Last Chance to Eat” by an author I had never heard of landed on my desk, I picked it up and didn’t stop reading until I had finished two more food books with more writing than recipes.Continue reading
A gastronomic world within reach
Los Angeles Times
Cookbooks I buy on the road have always been my idea of trips that keep on giving. Continue reading
Cook, memory
Saveur (published in altered form)
Sometime after I got out of restaurant school and started writing about food, my next-older sister unexpectedly sent me the closest thing to an heirloom from my bleak childhood: my mom’s 1956 “Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book.” Continue reading
Good to the bone: short ribs
Los Angeles Times
Every few years a dish seems to come out of nowhere and spread like kudzu.Continue reading
I cook, therefore I am
Los Angeles Times
Don’t ask Pierre Gagnaire how many ounces of bittersweet chocolate go into one of his desserts, let alone how long to bake it. The notoriously imaginative Paris chef has more important insights to impart.Continue reading
That essential flavor: salt
Los Angeles Times
In 20-some years of professionally obsessing on food, I’ve come to realize some innovations in ingredients hit like a thunderclap (panko — where had that been all my life?) and others are more like a steady rain. Continue reading
The big dip
Metropolitan Home
Cheese fondue is the Danish furniture of food: It always seems on the verge of a comeback when in reality it never goes out of style.Continue reading
A simple, smoky solution
Los Angeles Times
Globalization is not always a bad thing. These days you can go off to an Argentina-born friend’s birthday party in Italy and come home with a California solution to one of the universal kitchen mysteries: how to cook fava beans without seven hours of prep work.Continue reading
The fine art of ribs
Los Angeles Times
Purists insist there’s only one way to cook ribs: Rub them with a salt-and-spice blend and let them smoke and smolder over live coals for a little less time than it takes to sit through “Gone With the Wind.”
Purists must have charcoal to burn.Continue reading